Expert: Israel at peak of omicron wave
Israel is at the peak of infections in the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant wave or a few days away from it, and in the coming week, it will witness a decrease in the cases, Professor Eran Segal, a computational biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science and an expert on COVID-19 in Israel, estimates.
COVID-19 quarantine. Credit: Pixabay.
He noted that a week ago, the experts estimated that the hospitals would be contending with 650-850 COVID-19 patients in serious condition when the number is 732.
Furthermore, they estimated that Israel would see 40-50 thousand verified cases per day when it is actually counting 63,000 on average per day.
20.61% if the tests done over the weekend returned positive, the highest number registered since the beginning of the pandemic two years ago.
The R coefficient, which indicates the spread of the virus, was registered at a decline in recent days, currently at 1.3.
Segal pointed out that now, at the peak of infections, the chance of being infected is highest from the beginning of the pandemic, and therefore those who are in the risk group for serious illness should beware.
“The chance of getting infected right now is the highest since the onset of the pandemic. Probably 1 in 7 or 10 people in Israel is carrying the virus,” he said.
Sixty-eight Israelis died of the virus in the past seven days, a 38.8% increase over the week before that, bringing the total of COVID-19 deaths in Israel to 8,393.
